Thursday, January 5, 2012

I don't make things difficult. That's the way they get, all by themselves...

So finding time to get anything started at all is already proving difficult... Hopefully once things start getting into a groove it'll get a little easier.

The plan is to start working on a game of my own. I have a few designs in mind, but finding something that will be relatively quick to make solo is the challenge here. Ideally I'd be after something high on gameplay mechanics but low on art requirements, so something like a puzzle game (or at least something with puzzle elements). Unfortunately I don't have a good candidate for that at the moment, so instead I'm going to work on the best option I have despite that it's likely to be pretty art heavy. If I end up having some kind of epiphany I'll switch over or (unless I'm most of the way through already).

The game itself is a side scrolling brawler designed specifically for phone/tablets, with an emphasis on over the top action and ridiculous Marvel Vs Capcom style combos. Further, because I've been watching a lot of 80's action movies lately I want to give it that kind of a look and feel. Combinations and moves should provide enough depth to expand gameplay away from straight beat-em up and into challenge and puzzle territory as well. What's more important is that it remains accessible and fun to play... I'm aiming to have it so that cool stuff should happen even if you just randomly slash around the screen. The downside to this is that it will be too simplistic for a proper PC/console release, but there are options for expansion and reuse for phones/tablets.

With all that in mind, I've decided to use Stencyl to make this game rather than Unity, just because its seems like it should be a lot quicker for one person (also 2D friendly). It reminds me a lot of doing things in Flash, so I already feel pretty at home in it. It's still one more thing to learn, but that wont take as much time as doing the art... Particularly because I just can't seem to get into a decent flow with it at the moment. Having to rely on 2 underpowered laptops instead of my regular desktop machine doesn't help either... But at the same time I don't see any point in wasting time until I have access to it again.

Today's pic is some random character and enemy sketches/colour considerations. I think a lot of the references/homages/rip offs should be obvious. At the moment I'm thinking final art will be pixels.

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